


through a field of poppies

by westmoor



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: (gestures vaguely) Jaskier | Dandelion, Drabble, Ficlet, Immortal Jaskier | Dandelion, M/M, Non-Human Jaskier | Dandelion, Not Beta Read, Temporary Character Death, author is not a native english speaker (sorry), self-indulgent overuse of botanical symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:08:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26071657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westmoor/pseuds/westmoor
Summary: Jaskier dies in autumn.Geralt lays him to rest at the edge of a birch grove overlooking a flood plain on the northern banks of the Pontar. He remembers the place, now gilded in the afternoon sun by wayward wheat having made its way to the rich river soil, where his bard had once pressed a ring into his palm (“How about this,” he’d said. “You keep this near and I’ll know you still want me at your side.” And Geralt had closed his fingers around it thinking he’d take ten thousand golden trinkets just to be gifted with that smile) and he knows that come spring it’ll be a meadow thick with wildflowers.The next time he sees Jaskier, he reaches for silver.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 20
Kudos: 420





	through a field of poppies

**Author's Note:**

> barely strung together and originally posted on tumblr.
> 
> haven't decided yet whether it belongs here or not, but we'll see.

Jaskier dies in autumn.

Geralt lays him to rest at the edge of a birch grove overlooking a flood plain on the northern banks of the Pontar. He remembers the place, now gilded in the afternoon sun by wayward wheat having made its way to the rich river soil, where his bard had once pressed a ring into his palm (“How about this,” he’d said. “You keep this near and I’ll know you still want me at your side.” And Geralt had closed his fingers around it thinking he’d take ten thousand golden trinkets just to be gifted with that smile) and he knows that come spring it’ll be a meadow thick with wildflowers.

He makes it to the coast alone, leaving a handful of filled notebooks and some letters in the care of trusted peers at Oxenfurt on the way, before turning and heading northwest. He felt conflicted about the lute - still feels conflicted about the lute as he straps it to Roach’s saddle - but Jaskier would not have wanted it lost in the ground, and he can’t stand the thought of those strings plucked by the hands of any other, not yet. Setting it down gently in its spot in Kaer Morhen is the least unbearable alternative on a list of unbearable options.

A cold winter melts away around a bleak spring and when he passes the gates that year he leaves a little more of home behind. Beneath his wolf medallion, separated by armour and cloth, an amulet of a different kind presses a circular mark into his skin.

-

The next time he sees Jaskier, he reaches for silver.

A wraith of some sort, his mind reels, a doppler or something- something similar, because there’s no other explanation. It’s impossible. There's a man walking towards him through a field of poppies and he isn’t possible.

Months of mourning boil into anger, anger at all he has lost and anger at losing it now again, the visage of his bard _stolen_ and worn as a mockery. Geralt finds the hilt of his silver sword, and he is furious.

But the thing wearing Jaskier’s face laughs at him then, and smiles, and it’s _that_ smile. The scent reaches him next, not the earthy, sour musk of weeks on the path but that _scent_ , the smell that lingered under road dust and chamomile and Geralt could never find words for, _Jaskier’s_ smell. It floods his senses, blinds him and leaves him weak, rooted, a century’s worth of Witcher sensibility screaming at his limbs to move, but he cannot. 

The face before him, close now, looks deceptively young, half the years or so of the man he held that autumn morning by the river. But there’s a crinkle to the eyes, a temperance to his expression that only came later, and the hands that reach for him are ones that knew every day until the last.

There are fingertips on his cheek, calloused, skimming his jaw and brow and wiping at whichever expression they find there. Murmured apologies as he himself struggles just to breathe. 

_If this is how I go_ , he thinks, _I’ll take it_. And he tips forward, filling his head with all things lost to eternity: The tickle of cropped brown hair against his nose, the barely-there scratch of stubble, the warmth of smooth skin as he buries his face in the neck of what can’t be his bard, waiting for it to dim and fade as every dream before.

But the arms that wind around him are strong - always a little stronger than expected - and the hands that wander up his back and settle at his shoulder and in his hair are ever so sure.

-

Their meetings are sporadic and unpredictable, at first, seemingly without rhyme or reason. 

They find each other at crossroads, in places between places, more often than not he will find his lark waiting under yew trees or in shaded spots overgrown by bluebells. No matter the way of their meeting, he is always greeted the same as Jaskier steps close, outstretched hand settling left of Geralt’s medallion, palm pressed gently against the near-indiscernible bump there, finding the rounded outline before arms settle around him and Geralt, for all his heightened senses finds his vision narrowed and senses blurred as Jaskier’s joy overtakes every other impression.

The bard is not always quite the same - at times he comes back slightly tilted, slightly younger, slightly paler, a little taller or thinner, but he laughs the same and his hair sweeps across his face just so, and Geralt knows better than trying to apply certainty to things that cannot be.

“Where are you, now?” The question slips anyway, one late night when he’s not sure whether the heat he feels stems from their smoldering fire or from the weight of the man drawing patterns on his skin. There's a huff of a laugh across his sternum and he can just make out the blue of the eyes that meet his in the darkness, and the knowing smile that lifts their corners.  
“I’m right here, love.”

It gets somewhat easier after Geralt brings the lute down from Kaer Morhen - another tether, he thinks, or perhaps there’s simply more to him now, more to a bard with an instrument than one without. Not just once he follows familiar melodies into narrow valleys where brooks spring from the ground, or deep into woods where the air is so still drawing it feels like a disturbance, or across fields of flowers which Jaskier will weave into Roach’s mane and bridle as he walks beside them, sometimes for days, weeks if it’s fair.

He asks again, much later. Too late by some degree, not for fear of the answer but for fear of placing force upon something so yielding as this dream. “What are you?” Barely a whisper, he’s nearly surprised when Jaskier turns to him several feet away, hair that was once threaded through with silver now shining like gold in the warm autumn sun, the grin flashed in his direction is blinding at first, but gentles as he makes his way closer. 

Folding himself into Geralt’s lap, thighs bracketing hips and Geralt’s hands find their home at a lean waist by habit and by choice, lips ghosting his brow, then his cheek, before whispering against his own:

“Yours.”


End file.
